Potential Blues cuts a beach bummer

9:12 PM,
Feb. 8, 2013

Scrapping the Blue Angels' July show to save money may cost local economy $2.5M

Written by

Troy Moon
tmoon@pnj.com

If the Blue Angels Naval flight demonstration team is forced to cancel its July show at Pensacola Beach, millions in revenue could be lost.

The Pentagon has proposed to cut Blue Angels air shows from April through September to save the Defense Department $20 million. Congress has a March 1 deadline to approve the across-the-board defense spending cuts, totaling $500 billion during the next decade.

"It's one of our biggest weekends," said Tyler Weng, a manager at Surf Burger on Pensacola Beach. "It would be hard on us. But we would survive." ...